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The Forum > Article Comments > Wind turbines’ CO2 savings and abatement cost > Comments

Wind turbines’ CO2 savings and abatement cost : Comments

By Peter Lang, published 4/5/2015

Wind turbines are less effective and CO2 abatement cost is higher than commonly assumed .

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>" and rather illogical conjecture at that! I checked your submission to see where you got it from, and you claim to have got it from Inhaber "

I said no such thing.

Aidan has a habit of making disingenuous statements. Others should read the submission themselves and make up their own mind. I am happy to answer questions (no more that 4 post per 24 h).
Posted by Peter Lang, Monday, 4 May 2015 3:15:55 PM
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We now have a reasonable estimate of wind turbines’ effectiveness at reducing CO2 emissions in the Australian National Electricity Market (NEM), i.e. 78% effective in 2014. Wind turbines generated 4.5% of the NEM’s electricity and avoided 3.5% of the emissions from electricity.

See Wheatley’s analysis of CO2 savings from wind turbines in the NEM, Submission No. 348 to the ‘Senate Select Committee on wind turbines’: http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Wind_Turbines/Wind_Turbines/Submissions

As wind’s proportion increases to about 15% by 2020 to comply with the RET, effectiveness is likely to decrease to around 60% (all else equal). If that is the case, the CO2 abatement costs estimates in the recent RET Review are probably gross underestimates – e.g. the CO2 abatement cost estimates with wind energy would need to be increased by ~67%.
Posted by Peter Lang, Monday, 4 May 2015 3:18:59 PM
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Peter, I apologise for wrongly conflating your first and second graphs. However, I appear to have found a major error in your submission.

In your Figure 1 (in submission 259 which is at http://www.aph.gov.au/DocumentStore.ashx?id=730f7f0a-ed8b-4f43-bcae-2859190fc405&subId=304951 ) you attribute the curve data to Inhaber, and provide the link to http://docs.wind-watch.org/Inhaber-Why-wind-power-does-not-deliver-the-expected-emissions-reductions.pdf

The curve in your Figure 1 is not only ridiculously low, but it's also a different shape from what Inhaber plotted. His curve is initially convex; yours is initially concave. Indeed yours resembles an inverse relationship, which is why I made the mistake that I did. Inhaber expects the result to be more like a sigmoid curve (which does seem more logical, though he does mention considerable uncertainty about how fast the decrease occurs, and I'd be surprised if it were anywhere near as much as his graph indicates).

Looking at your figures 2 and 3, I see that one of the assumptions you're basing your figures on is that "Mandating renewable energy to substitute for existing dispatchable power plants transfers an array of costs onto those plants. For example, the existing dispatchable plants’ fixed costs must be paid for by selling less electricity, so they must increase their price for the electricity they send out". But this would only be relevant for new dispatchable plants; existing ones would merely become less profitable. All power generators are likely to try to sell the power for as much as they can, but with more power coming from wind, the amount it can be sold for is far more likely to fall than rise.
Posted by Aidan, Monday, 4 May 2015 5:37:29 PM
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Windfarms are a boon for rent-seekers, and a shocking theft from taxpayers whose money politicians are throwing at these manufacturers, erectors, and farmers getting rent from the turbines in their paddocks.

SA, the state with the most windfarms, is also the state with the highest electricity prices in Australia and, I believe, in the world.

We have had no relief from from Labor's nonsensical RET either. Our money is still flowing to the opportunists, and the lower power prices are all in Tony Abbott's head.

We are all paying more to wipe out cheap power, one of the few global advantages Australia used to have.
Posted by ttbn, Monday, 4 May 2015 5:52:57 PM
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ttbn, when SA's electricity price was said to be the highest in the world, we didn't have so many windfarms. And while the mechanism to encourage windfarm development initially increased electricity prices, more wind (and solar) power in the system has resulted in lower electricity prices.
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McCackie, green will initially work without storage – it's only when there's a large amount of green that storage is needed. But storage won't be worth so much without green!
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Rhrosty, there are many places where wind turbines would be logical. King Island is probably one of them, but (as SA initially found) having all the turbines on one N-S ridge means the same weather tends to hit all of them at around the same time.

Tasmania is developing wind power, but it's already a net exporter of electricity (except when there's a drought).

Of course we should keep looking for alternatives. Thorium may yet become a practical one, but it isn't yet. I hope you now understand why.

The amount of biogas we produce is far less than what we'd need for it to power our electricity supply. It makes more sense to integrate it with the gas supply system.
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Curmudgeon, the real parameters are a lot more complicated than "tolerance limits of network operations". We're pretty good at forecasting wind. And, like with demand fluctuations, decisions can be made as to when to increase, decrease or turn off other power sources.
Posted by Aidan, Monday, 4 May 2015 6:46:17 PM
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This is just a blue print idea...We have coal deep under ground right?..So just light them up and feed them o2 and at the same time, run a water line to the hot spots and generate steam. The by-products of the burnings can be fed back down with o2 to where no emissions will reach the surface.

We have coal burning right now by natural causing's and no-one has jumped on it.

Just a thought

Tall
Posted by Tally, Monday, 4 May 2015 8:44:42 PM
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